Religion & Liberation Issue IV

2020·10.1 MB·English

by  Mujeristas Collective

Religion & Liberation
ISSUE IV
ISSUE IV
Catholic School Uniform La pobreza del hombre
04 16
Sarah Yanni Paola de la Calle
Religion & Liberation
Issue 4: Religion & Liberation is made possible by the Queens Council 05 Youth Day 18 La posteridad nos hará justicia
on the Arts with public funds from the New York City Department of Angela Portillo
Alysa Bradley
Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
Tiquani Story
06 DNA 20
Team Contact Tanya Leyva
Dara Burke
[email protected]
Founder & Director mujeristascollective.com
Stephanie Aliaga @mujeristasco
Soledad Confiar en la Tierra
07 21
spectrumstudio.works
Denisse Jimenez Gabriela Hnizdo
Magazine designed by Stephanie Aliaga
Creative Director Cover Art by Paola de la Calle
Ariana Ortiz Illustration below by Ariana Ortiz
The land of milk and honey
arianaortiz.com 08 Not For You 22
Darling Alvia
Amy Bravo
Content Producer
Denisse Jimenez
denissejuliana.com
10 I Pray 23 Indigenous Roots
Reza Moreno Victoria Garcia
Editor
Reza Moreno
sustainthemag.com
11 Untitled 24 Decaying self-portraits
Education Coordinator Darling Alvia Gilda Tenopala Gutierrez
Yovanna Roa-Reyes
Guadalupe as Liberator
12 Altagracia 26
Stephanie Aliaga
Alejandra Lopez
13 Una leyenda negra 27 Cerro de las Tres Cruces,
Ariana Ortiz Medellín
Banu Bayraktar
Published by Mujeristas Collective.
All rights reserved 2020. 14 Reverence
Ashley Sanchez
SARAH YANNI
Growing up in the Black Church, Y
women are valued for our appearance
C A T H O L I C
and the monetary support we provide,
but not the leadership potential we
S C H O O L
have. Women are often taught to
O
silence ourselves into salvation by
U N I submitting to men.
F O R M
In many Black Churches, the pastors,
U
reverends, and pulpit associates
are predominantly male when the
penny loafers: you wanted converse, anything else in the back of your neighbor’s car every morning as
congregations are largely female.
really. the shiny black leather, ephemeral shine, it drove away from home / polo (tucked): baby pink
Speaking and preaching as a woman
racked up mom’s card at the uniform store. your color, always the favorite. you had a few options
T
feet would protest, the shoes too slim, squeezing but none as subdued. a girlish pink, adequate and in the Black Church is always political.
appendages on the journey from english to math. it fitting for your bodies. virginal and fresh! a small I imagine performing a poem is even
seemed far-fetched, the notion of needing to erase school logo above your breast, a stamp for the more political.
variety, all the way down to the enclosure of toes. it public world to see. you didn’t go to any school,
was supposed to subdue class difference, although you went to the one with the convent, only women.
Listen to Alysa Bradley’s spoken H
everyone knew. the knock-off loafers from target, you will get so used to tucking in your shirt that
one-eighth the price, an instant label. you placed even after abandoning the uniform, the habit will poetry performed at First Calvary
a copper gold penny in the front for good luck, continue. scrunching fabric near your tailbone, Baptist Church in Brooklyn below.
knowing you’d need it with the nuns / knee high visible through all clothes. neckline buttons always
socks: buckling knees, your father’s inheritance, the falling off, you learned how to sew them back on

pain in your body you noticed the most. a choice of regularly. baby pink yarn to match the polo, no
navy or white, the thick wool and cotton covered evidence of disassembly / blazer: heavy shoulder
your shins, modest limbs. an august heat made pads made you feel safe, protected. larger than you
manifest, the socks were non-optional despite triple actually were. pins adorned the collar, bright ones,
digit temperatures. a trail of sweat on your lower from tender things that you enjoyed without shame.
D
legs, scrunched down near the teachers you know golden crosses puncturing fabric, that was the time
would go easy, a temporary reprieve, a blessing / you loved church and religion and found comfort
pleated skirt: we took them off to let you in. years in hymns. soon, you will remove them, put them in
of shortening the thick fabric, hemmed, rolled, and boxes, forget. you’ll lose the clips, you’ll lose all
for what? to look more seductive, i suppose. in faith. the blazer will assume its place in a plastic
A
middle school, mom made you wear it full-length, bag in a coat closet that smells like old age. like
plaid and coarse, past your knees. you cried on the those parts of you, gone / ribbon: not an official part
first day because you looked different, didn’t look of the uniform, but a common adornment. the top
sexy, didn’t know 13 year olds were supposed to. of the christmas tree. young girls, good girls, soft
it was the beginning of bottom eyeliner and who ribbon atop a high ponytail. tied into a perfect bow,
Y
did what behind the gym, and you wrote in your usually white silk. you always tried to use one but
diary and made up scenarios about everyone who it protested against your coarse curls. it fell in the
breathed near. you secretly bought a shorter skirt, wrong way or out completely. another way you did
wishing to belong, switching out of your long one not belong, another way your body did not match.
4 5
D N A
by Dara Burke
Soledad
Denisse Jimenez
The funny thing about my connection to the behind the rest of the congregation. This broken
Catholic faith is that no matter how much I work system that has gaslighted generations of my
to distance myself from it, it always seems to be family is like an extra organ sprouting inside of
there. me. It sits in my innards, a lump of coal that fills
me with guilt, regret, and self-loathing. I resent
But a Catholic identity reaches far beyond one’s my family for refusing to allow themselves to
participation. My dad grew up as a poor Catholic detach from the church. But really, I resent that
in Dublin. My mom grew up as a poor Catholic I can’t seem to either. This brave new world is
in San Juan and the South Bronx. My parents a secular one, but part of my spirit still rests in
are reasonable, relatively progressive people–yet the faith along with its history of abuse against
both defend the institution of Catholicism in a the people that made me. I unplug from science
way that appears wholly incompatible with every and ethics for the comfort that is my faith in an
other aspect of who they are. omniscient, inherently merciful being. In true
Catholic fashion, I feel great guilt about the fact
My dad says the faith is in his DNA, a tagline that I still feel connected to the Christian God I
that reminds me that Catholicism is not a was raised to believe unquestioningly.
political party I can simply choose to support
or disavow. It’s woven into the fabric of I sometimes wonder if I can ever come to terms
my heritage and family history, along with with my Catholic identity and reclaim it as a
famine, alcoholism, and the other maladies that point of pride. Perhaps someday I’ll be able
perpetuated poverty for generations. to discuss my experience of Catholicism in a
way that does not make me feel heavy. The
I’m disgusted by the fact that Catholicism trouble is, I don’t think that guilt and shame are
is so entrenched there, too. This disgust is compatible with pride. I believe that any sort
compounded by the fact that my ancestors were of acceptance of my inner Catholic kid will
forced into a faith that continues to be used to involve forgiveness: forgiveness for my parents
cut me and others off from fundamental rights. for baptizing me into a religion that promulgates
I hate the brash culture of conservatism and hatred; forgiveness for the church community
anti-intellectualism that permeates the Catholic for not providing the support and acceptance my
community. Brett Kavanaughs were a dime a family needed and deserved; most importantly,
dozen on Sundays. forgiveness of myself for my inability to detach
from my Catholic roots. To be honest, I’ve never
When my parents outgrew their marriage, we been good at forgiveness. Hopefully God is, if
steadily began to sit farther back during mass, all I was taught turns out to be true. Otherwise,
and eventually sat awkwardly on a staircase I’m pretty much screwed in terms of the afterlife.
6
NOT FOr YOU
I found this framed drawing of the
Virgen Maria on Washington Avenue
in Fort Greene. The painting was
behind glass which meant I could
easily paint a new layer onto the image
without damaging the original piece. I
knew that this image had to have been
made by someone else who was Latin
American, and I was interested in the
idea of collaborating with a stranger
in my neighborhood who exists within
my culture. I painted over the figure
with white and left the face drawn
by the stranger revealed, along with
the linework and drawing of Jesus in
the background. This piece feels like
a representation of my whitewashed
upbringing but raises questions about
whitewashing of religious figures
throughout history.
Amy Bravo
9
I Pray
Suffocated with guilt
Judgement day is all around us when religion pours through our veins
If religion is going to separate us as brothers and sisters and put borders
between us, then I want no part in that
But I still find sanity when I close my hands real close to pray to a God I
can’t seem to see or hear, even if this God doesn’t exist, they take away
my fears and anxieties
I find security inside a church because it reminds me of my parents that I
seem to be lacking
If this same church is going to throw hateful words around, then leave me
be
If I ever feel the need to force feed my children these hateful words that
somehow end up in Christ’s children’s mouth then tie up my hands and
throw away the key: please, I pray that I never end up like my parents.
Growing up Catholic in my family meant saving myself for marriage,
that a man would never want me if I was tainted.
Growing up Catholic meant I was not allowed to explore different ideas
or beliefs.
Growing up Catholic meant I was shackled to a bible that preached no
form of liberation for the humanity it was trying to control.
This is why I pray, I pray, I pray. I pray for those blinded by spirituality to
one day see. Darling Alvia
Reza Moreno
10 11
una leyenda negra
those who need to know, know:
the old magic still runs hot, underpaints
air, ground, the sunspots that fleck the wall
in weak, irreverent moments,
I hope its echo limns my body, too,
helps guide yours closer,
thready pulse at my back
though the true binding—the names, the
knowledge—
has long since been sapped from our heads,
wrenched from our mouths
but what are matters of truth when la virgen,
crowned, brownskinned
smiles at me warmly, her dark eyes leading me
to love?
The base layer of the photo is my grandmother’s passport when
she immigrated to the United States in 1963 from Dominican
Republic. Her middle name was Altagracia, which is the patron
saint of Dominican Republic so I made her into a more modern, ariana ortiz
pastel version of Altagracia.
Alejandra Lopez
12 13
on Sunday I and in that apartment, above the dining room table, is Jesus himself,
looked for god in the mirror. painted sitting at his own table, at his last supper.
unbraiding my hair, for as long as I can remember Jesus has watched us eat,
I paused because for as long as I can remember crosses hung above my grandmother’s door,
Mary doesn’t have thick eyebrows, for as long as I can remember she has lit prayer candles in times of need.
her face is smooth and hairless god listens to my grandmother, and god listens to my mother,
and it doesn’t look like mine. and that makes me think that maybe god
is a brown woman.
angels don’t look like me either,  because god listens and understands, and god made sure that my grandmother made it here
they are peaceful and they are pale and blonde.  safely. she looks out for her own.
they do not carry the reality of brown womanhood on their shoulders.
not like me. they have nothing to lose.   and maybe the painters had it all wrong,
so, it only made sense, on that Sunday morning,  maybe Mary was brown like me and her upper lip also had peach fuzz,
that god wouldn’t look like me. maybe her eyes, too, were brown infused with the gold that was ripped from the earth,
god can’t look like me,  maybe her mother told her to stay in the shade and that is why she made sure that
a brown woman with a halo of black hair, I was born with the same brown skin, because she wasn’t allowed to celebrate her
and dark eyebrows and dark peach fuzz and dark eyes to match, brown-ness and she wants her daughters to be able to.
E A
because god wouldn’t be told to stay in the shade and god wouldn’t be told to 
I
C
C silence themselves,  maybe they had it all wrong: R
god wouldn’t be told that she bleeds every month because the first woman on earth maybe god didn’t want riches all in her name, A
N was a sinner, maybe god didn’t ask for invasion and colonization of my parents’ countries. G
god wouldn’t be told that she came from the rib of man, I wonder, Z-
E god wouldn’t be told to compromise. does she look at the empire on which the sun never sets and E
H
feel pain,
C
R on Sunday I  does she see the phrase “holy war” N
tried to talk to god, and laugh at the thought, A
E remembering: does she hold her breath and wait for liberation, S
does she ache for restoration like me, does she Y
V I was six when my mother taught me how to talk to god. cry when she watches over us. E
L
with our right hands outstretched she showed me,  H
E first touching the temple,  something tells me god just wants her creations to be appreciated. S
A
then the center of the chest,  something tells me she is tired of conquests and steel and smoke.
R
then each shoulder. 
she told me our conversations were holy,  I think god is a woman.
god would protect me because I, too, am a child of god. she is tired and
her work is taken for granted.
I was six years old and I remember I tried to speak to god that night. 
god knew my name because when I was too young to remember, maybe god is brown like me, maybe angels are brown like me,
my parents took me to church, and I was bathed in holy water and maybe god made us bleed because we are ferocious and powerful,
my grandmother cried,  menstruation a reminder that we can support life, a reminder that we are divinely human.
then in the third grade I was clothed in white once more 
and my grandmother cried maybe she knows the secret that women did not sprout from man’s rib because
when I consumed Jesus’s flesh and blood.  us women belong to ourselves and nobody else.
that night, god listened until I fell asleep, the force of creation lies within me,
and I was calm, and my mother was calm because she had showed me the way. and god made it so.
maybe I, too, am holy.
when I was old enough to hear the story
of my grandmother’s immigration to the united states, on Sunday I
she told me that it was thanks to god that she did not die in the desert, looked for god in the mirror.
thanks to god that she is here now, in her apartment, she smiled back at me,
now a citizen of the country that raised me. brown eyes the color of earth and honey.
“
La pobreza del hombre como
resultado de la riqueza de la tierra
— Eduardo Galeano
Liberation Theology insists that we center the poor in our
struggle for liberation. This mixed media collage, which
sits on top of a map of South America, urges us to look at
capitalism, colonization, and the exploitation of America
Latina as the root cause of poverty and migration.
Paola de la Calle
* The poverty of man as a result of the richness of the land
17
Angela Portillo
19